The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson, a Never Trump conservative and former GOP strategist, predicted, during a 2022 interview with The Guardian, that his former party would ultimately "bend the knee" to Donald Trump in the 2024 election. And just as Wilson predicted, one prominent Republican after another endorsed Trump once he became this year's presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
That support of Trump has only intensified since a Manhattan jury convicted him on 34 criminal counts in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr.'s hush money/falsified business records trial.
In a listicle published by the conservative website The Bulwark on June 5, journalist Will Saletan lays out five talking points that Trump's Republican defenders have been pushing since the verdict was handed down.
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The conservative journalist doesn't agree with any of them, but he lists them to illustrate the extremes that Republicans are going to in defense of the former president.
"Republican elected officials are doing what allegiance to their leader requires: They're attacking the jury," Saletan laments. "These attacks aren't confined to the quirks of the case or the politics of Manhattan. Republicans are inventing reasons to reject any verdict against Trump. It's an extension of what they’ve done since 2020: inventing reasons to reject any election Trump loses. Respecting juries, like respecting elections, is just another obsolete norm."
"Republican denialism," according to Saletan, is now taking the form of not only denying that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election — it is now taking the form of attacking and vilifying jurors.
The five post-verdict GOP talking points that Saletan lists — and is vehemently critical of — are: (1) "Trump did nothing wrong," (2) " All the jurors were Trump haters," (3) "Only fools or haters could have found Trump guilty," (4) "Nobody who respects this jury can be a Republican in good standing," and (5) "The jury is trying to steal the election."
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"The Manhattan case certainly has its shortcomings," Saletan argues. "It's an odd combination of business-record misdemeanors, gross sexual behavior, shady hush-money schemes, and tenuous interpretations of campaign finance law. But the GOP's response to the verdict goes well beyond that."
The Never Trump journalist continues, "The party of Trump is mounting a propaganda campaign against any jury that threatens its leader. And it's excommunicating any Republican who speaks up for the rule of law."
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Will Saletan's full listicle for The Bulwark is available at this link.
